Grip and Release
by Petra Todd
Summary: "It isn't like she thought it would be. Sinking into Mary Morstan doesn't feel safe; she feels exposed, like she's been thrust into the world naked and pink, squalling and kicking." On becoming Mary, and the choices the former assassin makes along the way.


Thanks to Lexie for the beta reading!

The Mature rating on this story is for some sexuality, not overly explicit. There's also childbirth, and mentions of past child death, if that's a trigger for you.

* * *

It isn't like she thought it would be.

Sinking into Mary Morstan doesn't feel safe; she feels exposed, like she's been thrust into the world naked and pink, squalling and kicking. In the first days after she steals a name from a stone in Chiswick Cemetery, the lights of London are too bright for her, too harsh. The cheap blend of the jumper grates against her skin as though her flesh was as new as the name that rolls unnaturally off her tongue.

The woman she's become can't afford the more luxurious brands she's worn since she went freelance and made all her own decisions. Being able to choose her all her own clothing, with no consideration to price or uniform, was once the ultimate act of independence for her.

_"I'm free," _she thought every time she ignored the price tag.

But a nurse can't believably purchase such clothing, and a nurse Mary Morstan is; so is she, this is not a lie. The necessary licenses for her new life may have been forged but her schooling was real before she came to the attention of certain men who recognized her potential. Taking a life and saving one required similar abilities, she discovered: a cool head, a steady hand, a tolerance for blood and an eye for the body's weaknesses. An understanding of people's flaws, and how much they desperately hold back from everyone, even when it could cost them their life.

Choosing nursing was a slight risk but only those with access to her homeland's knowledge would ever know that she'd had training in that area. Her formal education records had been destroyed long ago, and the CIA never knew as much as they thought they did. Freelancing for them was a laugh because they were dinosaurs despite their pretenses of equality. Convincing them and every other organization that she was dead was easy.

She was a woman, after all. It wasn't hard to make them believe she'd fucked up the last job and gotten herself blown up. They_ wanted_ to believe it.

Now here she was in London, raw, walking down the street gunless for the time in a decade and trying not to shake in her newly acquired skin.

_Mary Morstan. Who are you?_

She was still deciding.

* * *

Mary Morstan knew she was in trouble the first time she met him. She could practically smell the gunpowder rising from his fingers the moment he walked through the door.

She is Mary truly, she's almost certain of it. And choosing nursing wasn't an accident or a choice born out of laziness, she knows now. Working in the clinics has given her intense satisfaction, though the predictability of it is annoying. Shifting workplaces every sixteen months has helped, but there will always be a part of her that hungers for the feeling of something steely and cold between her fingers.

In a safe, beneath floor boards no one ever bothers with in her flat, she keeps some of her old toys tucked away just in case things go awry abruptly for Miss Morstan. Once in a while, when the monotony of the clinic is too much, she visits with her guns and cleans them. The stroke of a barrel through her fist and the ridges of a grip in her palms are enough to calm her and quell the itch. It's _enough._

That's what she believes until she meets John Watson.

Appraising him when he came for the interview, she took in the stiff military posture, the forthrightness of his gaze, and the shadows under his blue eyes that he took no pains to hide. There was a hitch in his step; a relic of an old injury, she assessed. His efficient eyes darted around the room, scanning until they met hers where she sat behind the desk pretending to file charts. There was no artifice in him, only a grim determination as he handed her a rather plain CV (in her quick glance, she spied the words _Captain_, _Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers_ and shivered because she'd_ known_, hadn't she).

When he shakes her hand, he shows no surprise or disapproval that the grasp Mary offers in return is just as firm as his own.

Her fingers slide into his, and looking into his battle-lined face in wonder, all she can think, _You too?_

The awareness makes itself known in her gut, the prickles of sensation that used to warn her she was being hunted. Her defenses have never died out, no matter that it's been three years without incident.

_I should send him away. Tell him Deirdre's filled the GP spot and won't be seeing him today. Tell him the advert was a mistake. Tell him he's overqualified._

Instead she tells him politely to have a seat, and offers him coffee. He takes a chair by a waiting mother and child, while she busies herself with fixing a cup for him and one for herself with sugar, ignoring the heat in her cheeks.

John hurries over to take a styrofoam cup from Mary, his fingers brushing hers. In their haste, the hot liquid sloshes over his hands and Mary drops her cup onto the tiles. She swears loudly; the mother in the waiting room looks up scandalized, and John's somber face breaks into a grin for the first time.

"It's fine. I'm alright. See here, I've got it." He grabs a handful of paper serviettes from the coffee cart and wipes the coffee from his hands. Kneeling to the floor, he mops up the spill. "This stuff's no good though. You'll have to let me buy you a coffee after the interview."

The sunlight of the fading afternoon catches his eyes, and deepens his smile lines as he looks up at her.

_Oh no_, Mary thinks as she feels her face light up, and she nods. _I should have sent him away._

* * *

He kisses her palm before sliding out from beneath the blankets, and heads naked to the kitchen to grab Mary a chilled bottle of water from her refrigerator.

There's no moon tonight but the lights of the city shine bright enough to throw shadows into the bedroom of Mary's flat. Dragging her hands through her tangled, sweaty hair, she sighs and massages her left leg, curling her toes. Her thighs will ache in the morning again, but John is worth it, she's learning to her delight. The last few months, day and night, have been the happiest she can remember since- well, since days she doesn't think of anymore. The past is a luxury and a danger she can't risk.

She's still rubbing her legs when he returns and slips backs into her arms, nuzzling at her throat. The cold shock of the water bottle against her bare breasts forces a yelp from her throat. She knocks the bottle aside too late.

She sees the whiteness of his smile. "Sorry." His fingertips brush the icy drops from her collarbone, and stroke a path down to her navel.

"You don't look sorry." His fingers dip lower in response, and she draws him down to her, lips parted. "You don't taste sorry." After a few breathless moments, the kiss turns to another yelp, this time in John's outraged tones.

The now-uncapped water bottle in Mary's hands splashes ice-water across his hair. She laughs and douses herself as well, the water streaming down their foreheads and necks, soaking the sheets. She tips the last of the bottle's contents into her mouth and swallows happily before tossing the container across the room.

"What the hell!" John grumbles, but his eyes are mirthful. He shakes his head like a dog, his hair standing up in wild spikes. Mary ruffles it, and kisses him softly.

"Thirsty?" She asks, meeting his eye.

"Yeah," John says, pressing Mary onto her back. He leans in to catch a drop of water on her throat with his tongue, and then another. "Yeah, I am."

* * *

John isn't the first person she's taken to bed since she shrank herself into Mary Morstan's existence, but after six months together, she knows he'll be the last.

It isn't anything like it was with the others. Certainly nothing like it was with David, who was so kind and breakable she had the urge to set him on a shelf with her collection of glass ballerinas.

(She bought the entire collection in one go at the moving sale that helped furnish most of her flat. She thought Mary might be the type of woman who collected kitschy knick-knacks. She later phased out the characteristic as too tiresome to sustain, and decided Mary was more about quality than quantity. Also, dusting was a pain in the arse.)

She let it go on with David for far too long, because she had forgotten how not to hurt someone. Her former colleagues would laugh to see the cleaner who'd pulled off the notorious Maracaibo job dodging visits from an earnest salesman with an armful of roses.

_It really is me, David_, she tried to explain. _You're wonderful._ _But I can't do this._ _I'm not there yet_. She should have taken David's ring and booked the chapel. He would have never sensed the truth. But she felt like she was drowning every time she envisioned their future together.

John is different: sturdy, but not so strong that he doesn't need her at all. The cracks in him left by war and too many fallen friends have healed over with silvery scars. The real scars of his body are no less fascinating; the first time she leans over to kiss the gnarled contours of his shoulder, he shudders under her and gives himself over to whispering her name.

It _is_ her name by then.

He tends to their patients with humor and diligence, and the good-natured exasperation he exudes toward those who won't help themselves makes her smile. They move in sync, passing patients' files and shuffling people in and out the door. One afternoon, John glances up to catch her watching him lecture a patient, an older man who refuses to quit smoking, and their smiles match. Mary ducks her head and grabs a chart off the desk, but her grin is too wide to miss.

"Are you two married?" the patient asks.

"Nope," John says, tugging his stethoscope off his neck and meeting Mary's eyes. "Thought I'd get her to move in with me first, and go from there."

"That makes sense," the man agreed. "How 'bout I do half a packet a day instead? I could do that, I think."

In the hall outside the exam room, Mary presses her palms to her cheeks. She once fell asleep on a beach on Maui, and woke up with her face flaming red and nearly blistered from the sun. She thinks her cheeks might be as hot right then as they were that day.

Sometimes she can't believe this is the same man who stepped into the office with traces of death clinging to him. Mary wonders if she was wrong about him after all. But then she sees the practiced, stiff set of his shoulders as they pass soldiers; or she spies cold steel in his eyes when they're watching a film and a bad man gets what's coming to him. And then she knows.

_Ah, there you are, killer._

Later that evening, lacing her fingers into John's as they stroll along a path in the park, Mary fantasizes about telling him the truth. What would he say? Would he want to hear about her previous self's exploits, how cunning she was, how she fooled three governments into thinking she was dead? It's a ridiculous notion, discarded without serious consideration. John loves Mary, and when he again asks her to move in with him, she says yes without hesitation.

* * *

She likes him. She hadn't expected that.

Every person she spoke with that ever knew Sherlock Holmes described him in the least flattering terms possible. He was arrogant, high-handed, cold, deceitful, disrespectful, callous with human life, and single-minded to a fault.

All of these Mary could forgive. After all, she shared a number of his sins. But he sounded like a dull, serious sort. Dedicated to nothing but his cases and the occasional gruesome experiment in the kitchen, from John's rare recollections of the dead man. Your classic insufferable genius.

No one had ever told her how funny he was. In the countless newspaper accounts of the fall of Sherlock Holmes, not one had captured the bright fire of his personality, or the crackling wit.

John had never mentioned it. It had taken him months to tell her about his best friend at all, and then only in the briefest terms. She understood now that relating the simple, often negative details were the easiest.

After the incident at the Landmark restaurant, it took only a handful of minutes for Mary to realize a few salient facts about the consulting detective:

He was not dead.

He'd been tortured rather recently. (The marks were unmistakable. Some things you never forgot.)

He smiled like a child who was getting away with stealing candy.

His improvisational skills were excellent (she couldn't stop admiring the sheer _chutzpah_ of a drawn-on mustache.)

He was truly sorry, and willing to let John pummel him to work out his feelings.

He had such exuberance and love of adventure, she was grateful recruiters had never discovered him the way they'd found her.

It wasn't callousness- Sherlock truly didn't understand the devastation he'd caused.

And John, despite his anger, was incredibly happy to have Sherlock back.

Outside in the street, as John hailed a taxi, Mary watched the detective dab at the blood on his nose.

She had the urge to ruffle his hair. He looked so lost and strangely endearing. The newspaper really had done an appalling job at capturing him. And she was oddly grateful he exposed the lie of the mustache. She adored John, but she could do without the chafing it caused on her thighs.

"I'll talk him 'round."

He regarded her with narrowed eyes. "You will?"

"Oh yeah." She damn well would. Already she saw more energy in John than she had in months, as the grief was replaced by rage. It was worth a botched engagement dinner. All that was left now was to nudge her love back toward his best friend, this curious man who studied her unapologetically with ever-changing eyes.

Mary was tempted to ask what the detective saw in her, but instead she smiled, and joined John at the curb.

* * *

When she hears the coyly chummy message from C.A.M. at her wedding, she knows it's over.

The dream times, the years when she could fool herself into thinking she was nothing more than Mary Morstan of London, are dimming even as she blinks into her champagne.

Old gears are stirring, whirring, and shifting as Mary digs deep into her memory for strategies, while Sherlock is still reading telegrams. On the other side of him, Janine beams up at him, and Mary curses herself for tempting fate by befriending her.

It seemed like a wise precaution at the time when she met Janine at a hen party for a mutual friend, and learned she worked for Charles Magnussen. The man was known to people in her former line of work. Blackmailers and assassins do rub elbows, and more than one target of Magnussen's had tried to engage colleagues of hers to take him out. But he paid the most, and was untouchable now.

_Maybe it's just a warning. He knows I know Janine, obviously. He won't have missed that. Maybe it's just…a twisted hello. _She tries convincing herself as Sherlock rambles through his best man's speech. The risks of waiting Magnussen out aren't too much, she decides. There may be more research needed. Was there a job she took that brushed too closely up against his empire years ago? She was always so careful, so political in her choices.

John squeezes her hand, and Mary smiles, remembering her audience. She whispers in his ear, "My god, how long is this speech? I need a wee again."

"Another?" John whispers back. "Good thing you've got bridesmaids to help with the dress. Too much wine."

"Hardly any actually," Mary says under her breath. Sherlock launches into another story, and the guests grow restless. "I think there's going to be a murder if we don't get him to hurry up."

"Well shit, he'd love that," John murmurs.

* * *

Jonathan Small is the hit of the party, as far as Sherlock's concerned. Mary's positive that if there were a murder at every gathering, he'd be far more likely to attend the parties he's invited to now that his name is cleared.

It's just their luck to hire a murderer for a photographer, on top of Magnussen's message, but now she's wondering, are they going to get their wedding photos?

Her new husband shrugs. "I don't know; does it matter?"

"Well, we put a deposit down with that company, for heaven's sake," Mary complains to John as they cart off the killer.

"May I have this dance, Mrs. Watson?" John extends a hand, and Mary slides into his arms. The fuss of the murderous reception (which was very _them_, she secretly thought) and the telegram disappear when her husband holds her.

The music of Sherlock's violin surrounds them, and Mary lets go, the rhythm beyond her control. The waltz carries her gently around the room in John's arms, and when he dips her, she feels a thrill of unsteadiness race through her.

"Really?" she gasps.

He answers her with a grin and a kiss, binding them together as their friends applaud around them.

_The signs of three._

_Does he understand? Does he know? Could he ever begin to know what it is to feel this?_

Mary knows her face is frozen in panic. They think it's just the baby. And it is that. A baby. The shape of it grows in her mind, from a pale circle to a vague curve with dark eyes to a little being with its fists curled toward its mouth. But it's more than that.

She takes in the men before her, her husband John and their friend Sherlock who has become so dear to her in these last few months. And a child she never thought she would have; she never thought she would see another childhood, and now there is something growing inside her, stretching her bones and changing her very blood. And she is certain: this is her family.

_Magnussen doesn't just say hello and you know it._

_He's starting something._

_But you will finish it._

"You alright?" John's face is creased with worry.

Mary shakes herself out of her shock. "Yeah." She is. They will be, all of them.

Because Charles Augustus Magnussen will die within three months, she's already decided.

* * *

It would have been so much easier if they'd just stayed out of the way.

She'd had a long time to think about what went wrong that night. She spent months being angry at herself, being furious at Magnussen for still being alive and even angry at Sherlock for walking in on them. It was hardly just, with what she'd done to him, but no one ever said life was fair. She was trying to save them all, and John and Sherlock had to ruin her perfect plan with their investigating antics. But this wasn't a game of cleverness; Magnussen was a monster and there was only one way to deal with his kind.

The way John looked at her in the empty house in Leinster Gardens. She felt nauseous just remembering it. The gunmetal glare and the deathly smile.

This was the man she fell in love with too, under the soft jumpers and doctor's hands. Only this side of him was never supposed to be directed at her.

Her own foolishness astounded her.

John wouldn't talk to her after that night. The silence between them widened, and in the end, Mary made the conscious choice to step away while he considered everything. The baby. The thumb file. Her.

She occupied herself with other things: getting the baby's room prepared (a success), making amends with Janine (an understandable failure) and finding a new part-time job since working with John was unwise when they both needed space.

She thinks he could've understood her choice to remove Magnussen, but hurting Sherlock, almost taking him away again. Even she finds that nearly impossible to forgive.

Hell, Sherlock had emailed her several times during his long-term hospital stay, and she had shot the man. But Sherlock wasn't the one left behind during his last death.

When she allows herself to remember the comprehension dawning on his face and her finger tightening around the trigger, the guilt chokes her until she can't breathe. His physical rehabilitation was going well, but only a miracle saved him in surgery. If she had it to do over again…but she didn't.

And she couldn't survive on ifs. Survival of the most primal kind was all she could think of these days.

She wouldn't have been able to explain out loud how she felt inside, with the baby growing; it felt too barbaric. She felt feral, her senses prickling with awareness. Her claws were unsheathed, ready to attack if necessary. The world was pungent and bitter, and pregnancy was nothing like the peaceful balm of motherhood she'd been led to expect by telly and magazines. Cradling her swelling belly and stroking the new stretch marks, she felt both vulnerable and invincible. With every twinge of her expanding hip bones, she became more aware of how the self she had established wasn't as rock-solid as she had fooled herself into thinking.

She thought that she might be on the right path, though. It seemed to her that most people weren't quite certain of themselves; that didn't make them bankrupt of humanity, did it?

She was Mary, she was sure of that much. (AGRA was a long ago memory, and a disaster when resurrected.) She was a nurse, and would be a mother. She loved cooking, and London, and the park at dusk, and the way John's lips puckered in thought. She liked listening to people at the airport speaking in different tongues to test herself, and she wants to get a cat when the baby is older. She likes comedies and the color blue and dancing even though she doesn't know how. She's Mary, and that's a start.

That would have to be enough for now.

* * *

Two weeks before Christmas, while walking the streets of the city and shopping for tiny dresses, she feels restless and driven to keep traveling; to where, she doesn't know. She wanders into a bustling tube station, and is halfway to her destination before she understands. Getting off at a stop she hasn't seen in five years, she trudges along a street lined with bare trees that grow lushly in the summer. She remembers being overwhelmed by the genuine purity of the place when she last walked the paths.

Back then, she was unprepared for peace.

She should have forgotten by now where to go; the stones are generic and disordered. But her feet know the way, even if she wavers. Tucked in the back, surrounded by a trio of taller monuments, lays a small gravestone.

"Hello, Mary," she says as she kneels.

Arm curved around her belly, Mary ignores the icy cold of the ground seeping into her legs and studies the date on the stone.

"I never did like October." She stops, feeling foolish. "I don't know why I came. Everything is all wrong. I lost my best friends. My husband's not here, not with me even when he is, and I suppose that's fair. But I'm having a daughter. _We're_ having a daughter." Mary lets the words roll over her tongue, as she feels her baby squirm inside her. "She's a busy one. Always kicking, always aware. Loves when I play music for her. Not too much longer now and I'll get to meet-"

The date on the tombstone draws her eyes and she cuts herself off. "But they never met you, did they, your parents. I'm so sorry. I never thought about it, really. I just needed a name, and there you were. I took it. A nice name, but not one most people would notice. Simple, but s-strong." Mary trips over her last word; she feels as though a hand was reaching inside her winter coat to squeeze her throat.

It isn't until she feels wetness on her cheek that she realizes she's crying.

"Alright, I'm being an idiot." She digs into her pockets. Her allergies have gone haywire since she got pregnant, and she never leaves home without a pile of tissues.

"Right." She lumbers to her feet, bracing her belly and sniffling.

"I just…I suppose I wanted to say thank you. And I'm really sorry your mum never knew you. Because I bet you would've been a great girl."

She stops, and grabs another tissue from her pocket. Her eye makeup is a lost cause but she can tend to her nose at least, she figures as she walks away from the grave.

Her face is dry by the time she reaches the street, and she's done what she can to wipe away the mascara. The trip back to the tube station is going to be harder than the journey to Chiswick Cemetery. Her back and hips are aching from the long walk, and she's fantasizing about a taxi materializing out of nowhere when she spies someone tailing her half a block behind.

Her heart races for only a few seconds though, because she'd recognize the tell-tale manner in which her shadow holds his cigarette any day.

Mary spins around and calls out, "Is this going to become a regular thing, Sherlock, or is today special?"

He jogs to her, tossing aside the cigarette. "Just keeping the smoke away from the baby. Isn't that what I'm supposed to _do?_"

Mary casts him a withering sidelong glance, and he smirks.

"You shouldn't smoke. Your heart-" She hesitates. "Sherlock, I can't ever-"

He rolls his eyes. "Oh shut up. I came to invite you for Christmas dinner."

"Does John know?" Mary's heart speeds up again, and the baby flops around inside her like a fish.

"He will. It's at my parents' house. It'll be fine. Oh, don't mention shooting me before dessert though." He pulled a face. "Would put a damper on things with my mother."

* * *

"Is 'Mary Watson' good enough for you?"

_Am I?_ she wonders. _God, I try to be._ Afraid of the dream ending, she rushes out, "Yes, oh my god, yes!"

_A living name. _She's always liked being Mary. But the origins of the name never really escaped her. _Mary Watson. That's me._

She exhales and the tightness in her chest breaks.

"All this does not mean that I'm not still basically pissed off with you," John says, his face serious and loving, and Mary falls for him all over again.

* * *

She labors for twelve hours after being induced, a week overdue; her daughter doesn't want to leave her, it seems. The doctor is pushing for a C-section when Mary's cervix finally decides to dilate enough for her to push.

The pain is like nothing she's ever known, and that includes gunshot wounds and an abscessed molar. John paces the room with her as the contractions come, closer and closer together. Sherlock gives him a break around lunchtime and walks with her, while informing her of the obstetrician's peccadilloes.

"Sherlock, I don't want to hear about her parking offenses," Mary groans through gritted teeth. The contraction rips through her, and she squeezes his hands so hard, her finger bones ache.

"The point I'm getting to is, I don't see anything offensive in the way of her skills. And isn't that comforting?" Sherlock says brightly. He looks offensively good, crisp in a clean suit while she sweats and weeps in a hospital gown. "To be honest, I thought you might be more prepared for this, with your background." He tipped his head knowingly, his eyes darting toward the aide changing the sheets. "I don't mean the nursing career, I mean the-"

"Yes, I know what you mean. I'd rather have my fucking fingernails pulled out or be waterboarded again than go through this, god this is hell," Mary says as a wave of nausea rolls through her.

The contractions are moving across her lower back now as well as her stomach, and for a moment Mary thinks, _You know what? I quit. I'm not going to do this. Nope, calling it off. _

In the throes of labor, this makes perfect sense to her. Luckily, John returns from his quick break to prop up her flagging spirits and help her into the bed for a rest.

"What the hell did you say to her?" John asks Sherlock.

"Not much. I didn't even mention the nursing staff's obvious-"

"Sherlock, _not now. _Just go home, we'll call you."

"No, it's fine, he's actually sort of…distracting," Mary says, gasping as a nurse brings her a cold cloth to lay on her head. "I asked him to be here, remember?"

"She did." Sherlock drops onto the comfortable recliner, mercifully out of the way. He closes his eyes, folds his hands together, and lays back. "Let me know when she's crowning."

A cup of ice thrown from the bed hits him in the forehead.

* * *

The chaos falls away when she is born that night, just after 9 o'clock.

The last push takes everything from Mary, when she thought she had nothing left. Her daughter is born, and she knows from the impossibly wide grin on John's face that all the baby's fingers and toes are present and accounted for. His hands shake and he actually needs the doctor's assistance to cut the umbilical cord.

The delivery of the afterbirth is fascinating to Sherlock, who had apparently neglected that aspect in his research of labor. The look of rapt horror on his face as her obstetrician delivers the placenta is one Mary will cackle over for the rest of her life.

Watching the absurdity play out before her, Mary shivers and fills with elation. This is her life: Mary Watson's life.

And this is her daughter, pressed against her breasts, freshly cleaned and wrapped up in a white blanket. Soft as it is, it must feel harsh to her tender newborn body, Mary thinks. Her skin is livid pink, her eyes screwed shut against the blinding light of the room. The baby wriggles and squeaks, her tiny lips pursed in want and distress.

"Is she hungry already? Should I try to feed her? The books said different things." She tickles her daughter's lips with a fingertip, but the baby turns away, nuzzling into Mary's chest. Her fingers curl into fists, looking so severe that it's amazing she weighs practically nothing in her mother's arms. "Oh. I think she's alright."

"Yeah she is." John strokes his wife's hair, and kisses her cheek.

"Have you got a name picked out?" a nurse asks.

"We're still sorting it out actually- we've had a busy few weeks." John answers, and they both laugh. Sherlock snorts from his seat. The business of Moriarty's alleged return filled the last month of her pregnancy in a way she never expected. "She'll have one soon though. We made a list."

"Yes, we'll decide the perfect one, as soon as Mummy has a nap." Exhausted, she takes a sip of water from the cup John offers, and hands the baby off reluctantly to the nurse who needs to measure her again.

"Don't worry, it'll get sorted," John assures her. "We'll get her the best name."

"Wilhelmina," Sherlock offers.

"Ah, _no,_" John declares.

"I'm not worried," Mary says, lying back on her pillow. She watches the nurse carry her daughter into the adjoining room to be weighed and smiles. "I know I'll figure it out."


End file.
